Hi – this is Don, YOUR Harvard lawyer.

One of the things in which I specialize is internet-marketing law and litigation. I have a series of other blogs on this topic. Feel free to review them.

Clients often ask me how to remove negative or defamatory material from the Internet. For example:

• An anonymous person is talking crap about my company. I need to find out who it is and stop them.
• A former employee (who wasn’t even any good) uses their blog to trash my company. I want to sue them!
• I just saw a bunch of  photographs of me on-line! I didn’t give them the right to post them. How can I get them removed?

The law is pretty simple. In general, a person defames you – commits defamation – if they:

• knowingly make a false statement-of-fact, that
• damages your reputation.

Written defamation, like the kind on-line, is called libel. Actually, they’ve created a new term for on-line libel — “Twibel.” But it doesn’t have to appear on Twitter — it includes libelous statements that are anywhere on the Internet.

I have different blogs that discuss what to do if somebody posts negative material about you. Let me caution you, though, to be very cautious about what you write in response to it. Anything you put into the Internet world can, and often will, be used against you in a way you had never intended. A well-written letter from your lawyer makes way more sense.

You on-line reputation matters. Conduct a thorough online search of your name and company name. You want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if it’s too ugly and you want it removed from the internet, or if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at (616) 389-4960 or [email protected].